Category Archives: PHP

Upcoming Changes: Supported Versions of WordPress, Jetpack, PHP, and Node.js, and Delaying Upgrades

At WordPress VIP we help you focus on being creative and innovative, while maintaining a high level of security and reliability on which to build.

Part of providing the highest level of service is ensuring that your software stack, including WordPress core, Jetpack, and PHP are kept on recent versions. That is why today we are announcing some upcoming changes to our policy on version upgrades for WordPress, Jetpack, and PHP.

Starting on July 20th, 2021, we are taking some steps to ensure all customers are able to take advantage of the latest features and security provided by utilizing the latest software available

WordPress

VIP supports the current version of WordPress, and one major version behind.

Currently, most sites, regardless of WordPress version, are upgraded to the latest version on release day. This is the strategy we recommend for the highest security and to benefit from any new features.

Occasionally, some of our customers need additional time to test compatibility, and we’ve delayed upgrades for these on request. In order to ensure we can support security updates, we are limiting the length of time for these postponed upgrades.

Delaying Upgrades

Customers will only be permitted to remain on the prior major version of WordPress, and those will be subject to immediate point updates (normally, security related).

For example, at the moment, WordPress v.5.7 is the latest version, so the WordPress VIP platform would support v.5.7, plus v.5.6.*. Once WordPress v.5.8 is released (expected on July 20, 2021), customers who requested to remain on v.5.6.* will be upgraded to v.5.7 or v.5.8 within 2 weeks; VIP will coordinate this change with customers to minimize any impacts.

If a minor update is issued, all customers will be updated immediately: 5.8 to 5.8.1, and 5.7.2 to 5.7.3 for example.

This applies to all environment types – both production and non-production.

If you have environments currently running versions older than 5.7.x, and have questions, please contact your account team.

Why one version? Security.

According to the WordPress core team, only the latest active version of WordPress is actively supported.

The WordPress core team attempts to backport security updates to older versions when possible, but there are no guarantees, and no timeframe for updating older releases. This can mean that sites running older versions cannot benefit from important security measures that may be publicly known. Point (minor) releases, in particular, are often security releases, or contain important security updates and bugfixes.

In any case, the security of our customers’ sites is our highest priority and we will apply security upgrades immediately and without notice.

Sites in “branch” or “trunk”

WordPress VIP offers two options for testing upcoming versions of WordPress on your non-production environments: trunk and branch.

“Trunk” is used for the latest development version of WordPress. It is the newest possible version, but not necessarily a stable version. It includes Alpha and Beta versions and changes often.

“Branch” is used for Release Candidates, and is upgraded as new release candidates are made available. These two versions are often used for testing in develop or preprod environments.

Going forward, any environments on “branch” sites will be upgraded to the release version on release day; environments running trunk will continue to track trunk until explicitly changed.

Jetpack

VIP supports the current version of Jetpack, and one major version behind.

For example, at the moment, Jetpack 9.7 is the latest version, so the WordPress VIP platform would support v.9.7, plus v.9.6. Once Jetpack v.9.8 is released (expected on June 3, 2021), customers on v.9.6.* will be upgraded to v.9.7 or v.9.8 within 2 weeks.

Plugins

We recommend that customers use the latest version of any plugin, for enhanced platform compatibility and security.

To learn more about plugin updates, please see our documentation.

PHP

We support a single version of PHP which is defined platform-wide.

Currently that is v.7.4.18. We remain aligned with the official PHP team and only use versions of PHP which have Active Support.

Node.js

We support all Active LTS or Maintenance LTS releases, and the next Active LTS candidate of Node.js.

For example, currently, this includes Node.js 12, Node.js 14, and Node.js 16.

Pinning to non-major versions (e.g. 14.16.1) won’t be supported, and minor upgrades will be applied as soon as they’re made available.

Platform-Wide Upgrade Schedule

You may be interested in the proposed timeline or roadmap for VIP Go updates.
Our platform-wide upgrade schedule can be found here.

PHP 7.4 deploying to production environments February 23, 2021

On February 23, 2021, the WordPress VIP team will be deploying PHP 7.4 to production environments on VIP Go as part of our PHP 7.4 release schedule. This is a minor version upgrade for PHP bringing new features and bug fixes to the VIP Go platform.

Your production environment is the environment serving your end users requests and storing live data. VIP Go applications also commonly have develop and pre-prod environments and PHP 7.4 was deployed to these on December 15, 2020 and February 1, 2021 respectively.

If you would like to update your production environment before February 23, please open a support ticket with the WordPress VIP team.

Review compatibility scans in GitHub

In December 2020, the WordPress VIP team proactively scanned your VIP Go codebases and created GitHub issues for potential incompatibilities that were identified. We encourage you to review these issues in your VIP Go GitHub repository along with the official Migrating from PHP 7.3.x to PHP 7.4.x guide.

Should you have any questions, please open a support ticket with the WordPress VIP team and we’ll assist you.

PHP 7.4 deploying to non-production environments

On February 1, 2021, the WordPress VIP team will be deploying PHP 7.4 to non-production environments on VIP Go as part of our PHP 7.4 release schedule. This is a minor version upgrade for PHP bringing new features and bug fixes to the VIP Go platform.

Non-production environments refer to develop and preprod environments, when using the default naming convention, and extends to include environments with custom names; staging or uat for example.

We plan to deploy PHP 7.4 to production environments on February 23, 2021.

If you would like to update your environments before these dates, please open a support ticket with the WordPress VIP team.

Review compatibility scans in GitHub

Should you have any questions, please open a support ticket with the WordPress VIP team and we’ll assist you.

PHP 7.4 compatibility scanning and deployment to develop environments

On December 15, 2020, the WordPress VIP team will be deploying PHP 7.4 to develop environments on VIP Go as part of our PHP 7.4 release schedule. This is a minor version update bringing new features and bug fixes to the VIP Go platform.

To complement this action, we’ll also be scanning your code base with PHPCompatibilityWP, which will create new GitHub issues with the results.

Action is required from your development team, so we ask that you make them aware of the following information.

PHP 7.4 deployed to develop environments on 15 December 2020

On December 15, 2020, the WordPress VIP team will be deploying PHP 7.4 to develop environments. This will provide you with an environment on the VIP Go platform to test code changes in readiness for the platform-wide upgrade scheduled for February 23, 2021.

Scanner creating new issues in GitHub

To help quick-start your testing, we will also be scanning your code base with PHPCompatibilityWP and creating new GitHub issues for incompatibilities it identifies.

Our scan will group incompatibilities it identifies on a folder-by-folder basis and will create a new GitHub issue for each folder containing an incompatibility. Despite this grouping, it’s possible that hundreds of issues will be created. Depending on your GitHub notification settings, GitHub may send notifications to your team.

The WordPress VIP team will also open a support ticket with you containing links to these issues once the scan is complete. Please use this ticket to ask questions and when you’re comfortable your codebase is compatible, you can request your remaining environments be upgraded ahead of the scheduled platform-wide release if desired.

Addressing incompatibility issues

Once our scanner has created GitHub issues, we recommend progressing through the following steps in your local development environment before deploying code to VIP Go:

Updating your local development environments to PHP 7.4.
Adding the PHPCompatibilityWP ruleset to your PHPCS implementation, and using testVersion 7.3- to run the relevant compatibility checks.
If you are making use of Git submodules, we recommend scanning those as well.
Reviewing and acting on issues raised.

Once compatibility warnings have been addressed, we also recommend you perform integration or end-to-end testing to confirm applications behave as expected.

PHP 7.4 release schedule

The VIP Go platform will upgrade to PHP 7.4 in February 2021. This is a minor version upgrade bringing new features, bug fixes and a few incompatibilities. The full list of changes can be found in the official Migrating from PHP 7.3.x to PHP 7.4.x guide.

Schedule for a February 23, 2021 production deployment

We are planning a staged-release that will deploy PHP 7.4 to development environments before deploying to production environments.

December 15, 2020: Development environment deployments.
February 1, 2021: Remaining non-production environment deployments, commonly called preprod on VIP Go.
February 23, 2021: Production environment deployments.

If you would like to update your environments before these dates, please open a support ticket with the WordPress VIP team.

Testing with PHPCompatibilityWP

The WordPress VIP team recommends testing your codebase locally and then in VIP Go development environments in readiness for the production deployment.

To help quick-start your testing, the WordPress VIP team will scan the master branch of your VIP Go GitHub repositories with PHPCompatibilityWP and create new GitHub issues for identified incompatibilities. We’ll also open a support ticket with you containing links to these issues once the scan is complete.

We then recommend:

Updating your local development environments to PHP 7.4.
Adding the PHPCompatibilityWP ruleset to your PHPCS implementation, and using testVersion 7.3- to run the relevant compatibility checks.
If you are making use of Git submodules, we recommend scanning those as well.
Reviewing and acting on warnings or compatibility issues raised.

Once compatibility warnings have been addressed, we also recommend you perform your own integration or end-to-end testing to confirm your application behaves as expected.

PHP 8 deployed in September 2021

PHP 8 is scheduled for general availability on November 26, 2020, and we would like to take this opportunity to provide guidance regarding VIP Go’s release schedule for upcoming PHP versions.

The WordPress VIP team will deploy PHP version updates yearly in September. By making this schedule more predictable, we’re aiming to provide you time to plan and prepare in advance. This ten-month window from the general availability release allows time for the new version of PHP to stabilise and the WordPress community to release updates.

We recommend that you stay abreast of the VIP Go platform releases by subscribing to VIP Lobby email updates and following our Platform (Major) Release Schedule page.

Notice: PHP 7.3 Production Upgrade Complete on VIP Go

We’ve completed upgrading the majority of sites on VIP Go to PHP 7.3, in accordance with our planned schedule.

We’re happy to bring this improved stability and performance to our platform, and we want to thank everyone who worked with us to resolve errors or warnings in preparation for this upgrade.

Should you encounter any issues or have any questions, please feel free to contact the VIP support team.

Notice: PHP 7.3 VIP Go non-production upgrade complete

In preparation for the production upgrade to PHP 7.3 on VIP Go, all VIP Go non-production environments, including develop and preprod environments, have now been upgraded from PHP 7.2 to PHP 7.3.

You can find more details about the upgrade in our PHP 7.3 upgrade overview post. Production environments on VIP Go will be upgraded the week of April 23.

If you have any questions or encounter any issues, please feel free to open a ticket, and we’ll be happy to assist.

Notice: PHP 7.3 Testing in Progress for WordPress.com VIP

We’re beginning testing of PHP 7.3 on the WordPress.com platform in order to improve the stability, security, and performance of your VIP sites. From initial testing, we’re seeing a 5-10 percent reduction in page generation time, combined with a 5-10 percent reduction in CPU load.

As always, we are committed to bringing you these improvements while maintaining the stability and minimizing any potential impact to your live sites. We are scanning your code to identify potential incompatibilities, and we will let you know if we find an issue of concern with your sites.

We are aiming to resolve incompatibilities by April 23, 2019 in order to proceed with the upgrade from PHP 7.2 to 7.3.

What’s New in PHP 7.3?

New language features include a more flexible syntax for heredoc and nowdoc, improved error handling, and a new warning on continue statements that target switch structures. For more, see the full PHP 7.3 migration guide.

How Do I Prepare?

You can start preparing for the upgrade to PHP 7.3 by doing the following:

Upgrade your local development environments to PHP 7.3.
Add the PHPCompatibilityWP ruleset to your PHPCS implementation, and set a testVersion of 7.2-; this will flag any issues related to compatibility with 7.2 or higher. Are you making use of Git submodules? If so, we recommend scanning those as well.
Review and act on any warnings or compatibility issues raised by our team as we proactively review client sites.

Further Questions

Finally, if you have PHP 7.3-incompatible errors in your theme code, you may have already heard from us about it — or you’ll be hearing about it shortly. Please make sure your development team reviews and acts on any PHP 7.3 tickets from VIP. If you have questions, please open a ticket, and we’ll be happy to assist.

For Reference

Notice: PHP 7.3 Coming to VIP Go

After an initial testing period, and the resolution of compatibility issues surfaced during that time, we are proceeding with a planned upgrade to PHP 7.3 on all VIP Go environments during the next few weeks.

Schedule

April 8: Upgrade of all non-production environments on VIP Go
April 23: Upgrade of all production environments on VIP Go

We do plan to upgrade both the VIP Go and WordPress.com platforms to PHP 7.3, so we encourage you to test for compatibility, as well as contact VIP support if you need help resolving issues.

For Reference

If you have any testing feedback or questions related to this release, please open a ticket, and we’ll be happy to assist.

Notice: PHP 7.3 Release Schedule Delayed

We’re pausing our previously stated timeline for the rollout of PHP 7.3. We have rolled back all non-production environments to PHP 7.2 and will not be upgrading production environments to PHP 7.3 on February 25 as previously stated.

In order to provide the most secure and stable platform experience, WordPress.com VIP team is actively working to ensure our platform’s full compatibility with the latest build of PHP 7.3. Our initial testing uncovered some platform compatibility issues, which we are currently working to resolve.

When we have a new timeline for the release of PHP 7.3 on VIP Go, we’ll publish it here, in the VIP Lobby.

We do plan to upgrade both the VIP Go and WordPress.com platforms to PHP 7.3, so we encourage you to test for compatibility, as well as inform us if you need assistance resolving any issues.

More information

PHP 7.3 Upgrade Overview and Testing Resources

If you have any testing feedback or questions related to this release, please open a ticket, and we’ll be happy to assist.